Fredericksburg Theater Now Owns the Steve W. Shepherd Theatre Free and Clear
From FTC Executive Director Jeryl Hoover
It is my absolute pleasure to announce the happiest news we could receive!
We are over-the-moon joyful to tell you that we are the recipient of funding from two sources to pay off all our indebtedness.
Five individual private donations this month paid off the balance of the first lien on our theater and grounds. Thanks to the generosity of Roger and René Cameron, Dave and Sandee Gasmire, Roger Winter, Jolene Keefer, and Mary Scharold, the final balance of $26,118 for the Steve W. Shepherd Theater was paid on December 4, 2024.
In addition, a single anonymous grant has been received to pay off a second lien on December 23, and as soon as we can arrange the paperwork in January, will pay off the final large debt taken on in 2020-2023 for operations.
This benefits everyone having anything to do with FTC. Debt that doesn't make it possible to expand the reach of our arts' mission is unproductive. It's a drag on our ability to create new programming, It stalls facility improvements and delays proper staffing. It diverts fundraising efforts and hurts our standing in seeking larger grants.
To become free of this debt is the single most influential development of the Company in the past 5 years.
For your throwback enjoyment, the photo above shows then Board President Liz Tynan signing the real estate purchase documents on December 15, 2006, in the presence of Board members Dale Cook and Billy Davis, and attorney Tony Sauer.
Before the ink was dry, Henry Laughlin got to work every day through the next eight months volunteering as the general contractor to turn the building into our performance home by the opening production of "Amadeus" in September 2007. Then in 2008, thanks to a large naming-rights gift from Carol Ann Shepherd that reduced the loan balance by 2/3, it was christened the Steve W. Shepherd Theater.
Now, it's all ours - unencumbered and nevermore to require an annual budget line called "mortgage"!
FTC is 27 years old, and this terrific development has given me many wonderful moments this Christmas to reflect on how we got here. It's taken the unified effort of hundreds of generous donors, thousands of loyal patrons, years of dedicated work by staff and volunteers, many imaginative productions, constant dedication to the FTC way of treating everyone well, and being driven every day by loving what we do for this community.
You can easily imagine how much these gifts to eliminate debt will enliven the strategic planning process we're beginning next month, and how being debt free clears the path for organizational growth and influence in this community at a much faster and inspiring pace.
You will now be seeing and hearing from us more often about our creative, new initiatives designed to elevate and expand FTC's mission for decades to come, so stand by.
Happy New Year to all of you. It certainly is one for FTC!